MACHINIST motherboard

[julspower]

Hi all
Im currently thinking about building a nas from home usage

im looking at different option:
building with consumer hardware: lets say a B550 tomohak and a ryzen 7 or 9 cpu, some ram, but I read truenas my have difficulties with the 2.5gb lan (bummer)
then I found out som chinesse motherboard like this one:

X99 Motherboard LGA 2011-3 with Xeon E5 2670 V3 CPU 64G 4*DDR4 ECC RAM SATA M.2 | eBay

1Pcs motherboard. The motherboard is MACHINIST X99-MR9A-PRO. The motherboard does not contain a CMOS battery. (embargo regulations). Network card type: Gigabit. Motherboard Type: ATX. Ethernet: 1 Realtek Gigabit LAN;.

www.ebay.com

for course an older xeon and 64gb ram at this price seem attractive, would it work? driver problem? big no-no?
Any tips on what to do?
Im looking for something around 400$ (without the storage disk which could cost ~600$)

 

[Samuel Tai]

Avoid any boards with onboard Realtek LAN chips. This is a known pathway to an unreliable and problematic build.

 

[julspower]

and what about: https://www.newegg.ca/asrock-b550m-...on=legend&cm_re=legend-_-13-157-940-_-Product
?

the lan is a realtek but after a search in the forum it seem to be supported

 

[jgreco]

and what about: https://www.newegg.ca/asrock-b550m-...on=legend&cm_re=legend-_-13-157-940-_-Product
?

the lan is a realtek but after a search in the forum it seem to be supported

It is "supported" if by supported you mean to say that you're fine with random problems and low transfer speeds. In that case, then, yes it is supported. Otherwise Realtek is strongly disrecommended. You would be better off getting a server mainboard that has a quality ethernet chipset already built in. Failure to do so may mean that you end up wasting $35 and a PCIe slot down the road getting an Intel Desktop CT ethernet add-on card.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Please check the first couple of entries in the "Recommended readings" in my signature. That should equip you with a pretty good understanding. Yes, it will take more than 2 hours to read. But it is time well spent, if you are serious about TrueNAS and ZFS.

 

[julspower]

Hi again
jgreco does you answer imply that if I put a better nic like this: https://www.amazon.fr/Intel-Ethernet-L210-T1-Gbe-Nic/dp/B00ESFF2JC
would would be ok to have a relatively cheap motherboard?

ChrisRJ I will read that but can't find any decent option for a low budget

 

[jgreco]

If you put an Intel ethernet in, it will perform better and have less network problems. However, there can be a variety of other problems. You could have crummy AHCI controllers (SATA ports especially on non-Intel-CPU systems), poor manageability (server boards tend to have IPMI), might be lacking ECC (recommended for ZFS), might need to add a GPU (some mainboards can't boot without an output display), and a variety of other lesser annoying issues.